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THERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FAC 

LITY 

4 

FIVE    TYPES 


Five  Types 

A  Book  of  Essays 

By 

G,   K.   Chesterton 


Ne'w  York 

Henry  Holt  and  Company 

London 

Arthur  L.   Humphreys 

1911 


I  C^^ 


CONTENTS 


PAGK 


The  Optimism  of  Byron       ...  1 

Pope  and  the  Art  of  Satire     .        .  15 

Stevenson 32 

Rostand 44 

Charles  II 57 


Vll 


S^?3602 


THE   OPTIMISM   OF  BYRON 


Everything  is  against  our  appreciating 
the  spirit  and  the  age  of  Byron.  The 
age  that  has  just  passed  from  us  is  always 
like  a  dream  when  we  wake  in  the  morn- 
ing, a  thing  incredible  and  centuries  away. 
And  the  world  of  Byron  seems  a  sad  and 
faded  world,  a  weird  and  inhuman  world, 
where  men  were  romantic  in  whiskers, 
ladies  lived,  apparently,  in  bowers,  and 
the  very  word  has  the  sound  of  a  piece 

A  1 


THE  OPTIMISM  OF  BYRON 

of  stage  scenery.  Roses  and  nightingales 
recur  in  their  poetry  with  the  mono- 
tonous elegance  of  a  wall-paper  pattern. 
The  whole  is  like  a  revel  of  dead  men,  a 
revel  with  splendid  vesture  and  half- 
witted faces. 

But  the  more  shrewdly  and  earnestly 
we  study  the  histories  of  men,  the  less 
ready  shall  we  be  to  make  use  of  the  word 
'artificial."     Nothing    in   the    world   has 
ever  been  artificial.     Many  customs,  many 
dresses,  many  works  of  art  are  branded 
with    artificiality    because    they   exhibit 
vanity  and  self-consciousness  :  as  if  vanity 
were  not  a  deep  and  elemental  thing,  like 
love  and   hate   and    the  fear   of  death. 
Vanity  may  be  found  in  darkling  deserts, 
in  the  hermit  and  in  the  wild  beasts  that 
crawl  around  him.     It  may  be  good  or 
evil,  but   assuredly   it   is   not  artificial: 
vanity  is  a  voice  out  of  the  abyss. 

2 


THE  OPTIMISM  OF  BYRON 

The  remarkable  fact  is,  however,  and  it 
bears  strongly  on  the  present  position  of 
Byron,  that  when  a  thing  is  unfamiliar  to 
us,  when  it  is  remote  and  the  product  of 
some  other  age  or  spirit,  we  think  it  not 
savage  or  terrible,  but  merely  artificial. 
There  are  many  instances  of  this :  a  fair 
one  is  the  case  of  tropical  plants  and  birds. 
When  we  see  some  of  the  monstrous  and 
flamboyant  blossoms  that  enrich  the  equa- 
torial woods,  we  do  not  feel  that  they  are 
conflagrations  of  nature ;  silent  explosions 
of  her  frightful  energy.  We  simply  find 
it  hard  to  believe  that  they  are  not  wax 
flowers  grown  under  a  glass  case.  When 
we  see  some  of  the  tropic  birds,  with  their 
tiny  bodies  attached  to  gigantic  beaks,  we 
do  not  feel  that  they  are  freaks  of  the 
fierce  humour  of  Creation.  We  almost  be- 
lieve that  they  are  toys  out  of  a  child's 
play-box,  artificially  carved  and  artificially 

3 


THE  OPTIMISM  OF  BYRON 

coloured.  So  it  is  with  the  great  convul- 
sion of  Nature  which  was  known  as 
Byronism.  The  volcano  is  not  an  extinct 
volcano  now;  it  is  the  dead  stick  of  a 
rocket.  It  is  the  remains  not  of  a  natural 
but  of  an  artificial  fire. 

But  Byron  and  Byronism  were  some- 
thing immeasurably  greater  than  anything 
that  is  represented  by  such  a  view  as  this  : 
their  real  value  and  meaning  are  indeed 
little  understood.  The  first  of  the  mis- 
takes about  Byron  lies  in  the  fact  that  he 
is  treated  as  a  pessimist.  True,  he  treated 
himself  as  such,  but  a  critic  can  hardly 
have  even  a  slight  knowledge  of  Byron 
without  knowing  that  he  had  the  smallest 
amount  of  knowledge  of  himself  that  ever 
fell  to  the  lot  of  an  intelligent  man.  The 
real  character  of  what  is  known  as  Byron's 
pessimism  is  better  worth  study  than  any 
real  pessimism  could  ever  be. 

4 


THE  OPTIMISM  OF  BYRON 

It  is  the  standing  peculiarity  of  this 
curious  world  of  ours  that  almost  every- 
thing in  it  has  been  extolled  enthusi- 
astically and  invariably  extolled  to  the 
disadvantage  of  everything  else. 

One  after  another  almost  every  one  of 
the  phenomena  of  the  universe  has  been 
declared  to  be  alone  capable  of  making 
life  worth  living.  Books,  love,  business, 
religion,  alcohol,  abstract  truth,  private 
emotion,  money,  simplicity,  mysticism, 
hard  work,  a  life  close  to  nature,  a  life 
close  to  Belgrave  Square  are  every  one  of 
them  passionately  maintained  by  some- 
body to  be  so  good  that  they  redeem  the 
evil  of  an  otherwise  indefensible  world. 
Thus  while  the  world  is  almost  always 
condemned  in  summary,  it  is  always  justi- 
fied, and  indeed  extolled,  in  detail  after 
detail. 

Existence  has  been  praised  and  absolved 
a2  5 


THE  OPTIMISM  OF  BYRON 

by  a  chorus  of  pessimists.  The  work  of 
giving  thanks  to  Heaven  is,  as  it  were, 
divided  ingeniously  among  them.  Scho- 
penhauer is  told  off  as  a  kind  of  librarian 
in  the  House  of  God,  to  sing  the  praises 
of  the  austere  pleasures  of  the  mind. 
Carlyle,  as  steward,  undertakes  the  work- 
ing department  and  eulogises  a  life  of 
labour  in  the  fields.  Omar  Khayyam  is 
established  in  the  cellar  and  swears  that 
it  is  the  only  room  in  the  house.  Even 
the  blackest  of  pessimistic  artists  enjoys 
his  art.  At  the  precise  moment  that  he 
has  written  some  shameless  and  terrible 
indictment  of  Creation,  his  one  pang 
of  joy  in  the  achievement  joins  the 
universal  chorus  of  gratitude,  with  the 
scent  of  the  wild  flower  and  the  song 
of  the  bird. 

Now  Byron  had  a  sensational   popu- 
larity, and  that  popularity  was,  as  far  as 

6 


THE  OPTIMISM  OF  BYRON 

words  and  explanations  go,  founded  upon 
his  pessimism.  He  was  adored  by  an  over- 
whelming majority,  almost  every  in- 
dividual of  which  despised  the  majority 
of  mankind.  But  when  we  come  to 
regard  the  matter  a  little  more  deeply  we 
tend  in  some  degree  to  cease  to  believe  in 
this  popularity  of  the  pessimist.  The 
popularity  of  pure  and  unadulterated 
pessimism  is  an  oddity ;  it  is  almost  a 
contradiction  in  terms.  Men  would  no 
more  receive  the  news  of  the  failure  of 
existence  or  of  the  harmonious  hostility 
of  the  stars  with  ardour  or  popular 
rejoicing  than  they  would  light  bonfires 
for  the  arrival  of  cholera  or  dance  a 
breakdown  when  they  were  condemned 
to  be  hanged.  When  the  pessimist  is 
popular  it  must  always  be  not  because  he 
shows  some  things  to  be  bad,  but  because 
he  shows  some  things  to  be  good.     Men 

7 


THE  OPTIMISM  OF  BYRON 

can  only  join  in  a  chorus  of  praise  even 
if  it  is  the  praise  of  denunciation.  The 
man  who  is  popular  must  be  optimistic 
about  something  even  if  he  is  only 
optimistic  about  pessimism.  And  this 
was  emphatically  the  case  with  Byron 
and  the  Byronists.  Their  real  popularity 
was  founded  not  upon  the  fact  that 
they  blamed  everything,  but  upon  the 
fact  that  they  praised  something.  They 
heaped  curses  upon  man,  but  they  used  man 
merely  as  a  foil.  The  things  they  wished 
to  praise  by  comparison  were  the  energies 
of  Nature.  Man  was  to  them  what  talk 
and  fashion  were  to  Carlyle,  what  philo- 
sophical and  religious  quarrels  were  to 
Omar,  what  the  whole  race  after  practical 
happiness  was  to  Schopenhauer,  the  thing 
which  must  be  censured  in  order  that 
somebody  else  may  be  exalted.  It  was 
merely  a  recognition  of  the  fact  that  one 

8 


THE  OPTIMISM  OF  BYRON 

cannot  write  in  white  chalk  except  on  a 
blackboard. 

Surely  it  is  ridiculous  to  maintain  seri- 
ously that  Byron's  love  of  the  desolate 
and  inhuman  in  nature  was  the  mark  of 
vital  scepticism  and  depression.  When  a 
young  man  can  elect  deliberately  to  walk 
alone  in  winter  by  the  side  of  the  shatter- 
ing sea,  when  he  takes  pleasure  in  storms 
and  stricken  peaks,  and  the  lawless  melan- 
choly of  the  older  earth,  we  may  deduce 
with  the  certainty  of  logic  that  he  is  very 
young  and  very  happy.  There  is  a  certain 
darkness  which  we  see  in  wine  when  seen 
in  shadow ;  we  see  it  again  in  the  night 
that  has  just  buried  a  gorgeous  sunset. 
The  wine  seems  black,  and  yet  at  the 
same  time  powerfully  and  almost  impos- 
sibly red  ;  the  sky  seems  black,  and  yet  at 
the  same  time  to  be  only  too  dense  a 
blend  of  purple  and  green.     Such  was  the 

9 


THE  OPTIMISM  OF  BYRON 

darkness  which  lay  around  the  Byronic 
school.  Darkness  with  them  was  only  too 
dense  a  purple.  They  would  prefer  the 
sullen  hostility  of  the  earth  because  amid 
all  the  cold  and  darkness  their  own  hearts 
were  flaming  like  their  own  firesides. 

Matters  are  very  different  with  the  more 
modern  school  of  doubt  and  lamentation. 
The  last  movement  of  pessimism  is  per- 
haps expressed  in  Mr  Aubrey  Beardsley''s 
allegorical  designs.  Here  we  have  to  deal 
with  a  pessimism  which  tends  naturally 
not  towards  the  oldest  elements  of  the 
cosmos,  but  towards  the  last  and  most 
fantastic  fripperies  of  artificial  life. 
Byronism  tended  towards  the  desert ;  the 
new  pessimism  towards  the  restaurant. 
Byronism  was  a  revolt  against  artificiality ; 
the  new  pessimism  is  a  revolt  in  its  favour. 
The  Byronic  young  man  had  an  affectation 
of  sincerity ;   the  decadent,  going  a  step 

10 


THE  OPTIMISM  OF  BYRON 

deeper  into  the  avenues  of  the  unreal,  has 
positively  an  affectation  of  affectation.  And 
it  is  by  their  fopperies  and  their  frivolities 
that  we  know  that  their  sinister  philosophy 
is  sincere  ;  in  their  lights  and  garlands  and 
ribbons  we  read  their  indwelling  despair. 
It  was  so,  indeed,  with  Byron  himself; 
his  really  bitter  moments  were  his  frivolous 
moments.  He  went  on  year  after  year 
calling  down  fire  upon  mankind,  summon- 
ing the  deluge  and  the  destructive  sea  and 
all  the  ultimate  energies  of  nature  to  sweep 
away  the  cities  of  the  spawn  of  man.  But 
through  all  this  his  sub-conscious  mind 
was  not  that  of  a  despairer;  on  the 
contrary,  there  is  something  of  a  kind  of 
lawless  faith  in  thus  parleying  with  such 
immense  and  immemorial  brutalities.  It 
was  not  until  the  time  in  which  he  wrote 
'  Don  Juan '  that  he  really  lost  his  inward 
warmth  and  geniality,  and  a  sudden  shout 

11 


THE  OPTIMISM  OF  BYRON 

of  hilarious  laughter  announced  to  the 
world  that  Lord  Byron  had  really  become 
a  pessimist. 

One  of  the  best  tests  in  the  world  of 
what  a  poet  really  means  is  his  metre. 
He  may  be  a  hypocrite  in  his  metaphysics, 
but  he  cannot  be  a  hypocrite  in  his 
prosody.  And  all  the  time  that  Byron''s 
language  is  of  horror  and  emptiness,  his 
metre  is  a  bounding  '  pas  de  quatre.'  He 
may  arraign  existence  on  the  most  deadly 
charges,  he  may  condemn  it  with  the  most 
desolating  verdict,  but  he  cannot  alter  the 
fact  that  on  some  walk  in  a  spring  morning 
when  all  the  limbs  are  swinging  and  all 
the  blood  alive  in  the  body,  the  lips  may 
be  caught  repeating : 
'  Oh,  there's  not  a  joy  the  world  can 
give  like  that  it  takes  away. 

When  the  glow  of  early  youth  declines 
in  beauty's  dull  decay  ; 
12 


THE  OPTIMISM  OF  BYRON 

'Tis  not  upon  the  cheek  of  youth  the 
blush  that  fades  so  fast, 
But  the  tender  bloom  of  heart  is  gone 
ere  youth  itself  be  past.' 
That  automatic  recitation  is  the  answer 
to  the  whole  pessimism  of  Byron. 

The  truth  is  that  Byron  was  one  of  a 
class  who  may  be  called  the  unconscious 
optimists,  who  are  very  often,  indeed,  the 
most  uncompromising  conscious  pessimists, 
because  the  exuberance  of  their  nature 
demands  for  an  adversary  a  dragon  as 
big  as  the  world.  But  the  whole  of  his 
essential  and  unconscious  being  was  spirited 
and  confident,  and  that  unconscious  being, 
long  disguised  and  buried  under  emotional 
artifices,  suddenly  sprang  into  prominence 
in  the  face  of  a  cold,  hard,  political  ne- 
cessity. In  Greece  he  heard  the  cry  of 
reality,  and  at  the  time  that  he  was 
dying,  he  began  to  live.     He  heard  sud- 

13 


THE  OPTIMISM  OF  BYRON 

denly  the  call  of  that  buried  and  sub- 
conscious happiness  which  is  in  all  of  us, 
and  which  may  emerge  suddenly  at  the 
sight  of  the  grass  of  a  meadow  or  the 
spears  of  the  enemy. 


14 


POPE  AND  THE  ART  OF  SATIRE 

The  general  critical  theory  common  in 
this  and  the  last  century  is  that  it  was 
very  easy  for  the  imitators  of  Pope  to 
write  English  poetry.  The  classical 
couplet  was  a  thing  that  anyone  could  do. 
So  far  as  that  goes,  one  may  justifiably 
answer  by  asking  anyone  to  try.  It  may 
be  easier  really  to  have  wit,  than  really, 
in  the  boldest  and  most  enduring  sense,  to 
have  imagination.    But  it  is  immeasurably 

15 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

easier  to  pretend  to  have  imagination  than 
to  pretend  to  have  wit.  A  man  may 
indulge  in  a  sham  rhapsody,  because  it 
may  be  the  triumph  of  a  rhapsody  to  be 
unintelligible.  But  a  man  cannot  indulge 
in  a  sham  joke,  because  it  is  the  ruin  of 
a  joke  to  be  unintelligible.  A  man  may 
pretend  to  be  a  poet :  he  can  no  more 
pretend  to  be  a  wit  than  he  can  pretend 
to  bring  rabbits  out  of  a  hat  without 
having  learnt  to  be  a  conj  uror.  Therefore, 
it  may  be  submitted,  there  was  a  certain 
discipline  in  the  old  antithetical  couplet 
of  Pope  and  his  followers.  If  it  did  not 
permit  of  the  great  liberty  of  wisdom  used 
by  the  minority  of  great  geniuses,  neither 
did  it  permit  of  the  great  liberty  of  folly 
which  is  used  by  the  majority  of  small 
writers.  A  prophet  could  not  be  a  poet 
in  those  days,  perhaps,  but  at  least  a 
fool  could  not  be  a  poet.     If  we  take, 

16 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

for  the  sake  of  example,  such  a  line  as 
Pope's 

'Damn  with  faint  praise,  assent  with 
civil  leer,"* 
the  test  is  comparatively  simple.     A  great 
poet  would  not  have  written  such  a  line, 
perhaps.     But  a  minor  poet  could  not. 

Supposing  that  a  lyric  poet  of  the  new 
school  really  had  to  deal  with  such  an 
idea  as  that  expressed  in  Pope's  line  about 
Man: 

'  A  being  darkly  wise  and  rudely  great.' 
Is  it  really  so  certain  that  he  would  go 
deeper  into  the  matter  than  that  old  anti- 
thetical jingle  goes  ?  I  venture  to  doubt 
whether  he  would  really  be  any  wiser  or 
weirder  or  more  imaginative  or  more  pro- 
found. The  one  thing  that  he  would  really 
be,  would  be  longer.  Instead  of  writing 
'  A  being  darkly  wise  and  rudely  great,' 
the  contemporary  poet,  in  his  elaborately 
B  17 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

ornamented  book  of  verses,  would  produce 
something  like  the  following  : — 
'  A  creature 
Of  feature 
More  dark,  more  dark,  more  dark  than 

skies. 
Yea,  darkly  wise,  yea,  darkly  wise : 
Darkly  wise  as  a  formless  fate 
And  if  he  be  great 
If  he  be  great,  then  rudely  great, 
Rudely  great  as  a  plough  that  plies. 
And  darkly  wise,  and  darkly  wise.' 
Have  we  really  learnt  to  think  more 
broadly  ?    Or  have  we  only  learnt  to  spread 
our  thoughts  thinner?      I  have  a   dark 
suspicion  that  a  modern  poet  might  manu- 
facture an  admirable  l3rric  out  of  almost 
every  line  of  Pope. 

There  is,  of  course,  an  idea  in  our  time 
that  the  very  antithesis  of  the  typical  line 
of  Pope  is  a  mark  of  artificiality.     I  shall 

18 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

have  occasion  more  than  once  to  point  out 
that  nothing  in  the  world  has  ever  been 
artificial.  But  certainly  antithesis  is  not 
artificial.  An  element  of  paradox  runs 
through  the  whole  of  existence  itself.  It 
begins  in  the  realm  of  ultimate  physics 
and  metaphysics,  in  the  two  facts  that  we 
cannot  imagine  a  space  that  is  infinite, 
and  that  we  cannot  imagine  a  space  that 
is  finite.  It  runs  through  the  inmost  com- 
plications of  divinity,  in  that  we  cannot 
conceive  that  Christ  in  the  wilderness  was 
truly  pure,  unless  we  also  conceive  that  he 
desired  to  sin.  It  runs,  in  the  same 
manner,  through  all  the  minor  matters 
of  morals,  so  that  we  cannot  imagine 
courage  existing  except  in  conjunction 
with  fear,  or  magnanimity  existing  except 
in  conjunction  with  some  temptation  to 
meanness.  If  Pope  and  his  followers 
caught  this  echo  of  natural  irrationality, 

19 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

they  were  not  any  the  more  artificial. 
Their  antitheses  were  fully  in  harmony 
with  existence,  which  is  itself  a  contradic- 
tion in  terms. 

Pope  was  really  a  great  poet ;  he  was 
the  last  great  poet  of  civilisation.  Im- 
mediately after  the  fall  of  him  and  his 
school  come  Burns  and  Byron,  and  the 
reaction  towards  the  savage  and  the  ele- 
mental. But  to  Pope  civilisation  was 
still  an  exciting  experiment.  Its  perruques 
and  ruffles  were  to  him  what  feathers  and 
bangles  are  to  a  South  Sea  Islander — the 
real  romance  of  civilisation.  And  in  all 
the  forms  of  art  which  peculiarly  belong 
to  civilisation,  he  was  supreme.  In  one 
especially  he  was  supreme — the  great  and 
civilised  art  of  satire.  And  in  this  we 
have  fallen  away  utterly. 

We  have  had  a  great  revival  in  our 
time  of  the  cult  of  violence  and  hostility. 

20 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

Mr  Henley  and  his  young  men  have  an 
infinite  number  of  furious  epithets  with 
which  to  overwhelm  any  one  who  differs 
from  them.  It  is  not  a  placid  or  un- 
troubled position  to  be  Mr  Henley's 
enemy,  though  we  know  that  it  is  certainly 
safer  than  to  be  his  friend.  And  yet, 
despite  all  this,  these  people  produce  no 
satire.  Political  and  social  satire  is  a  lost 
art,  like  pottery  and  stained  glass.  It 
may  be  worth  while  to  make  some  attempt 
to  point  out  a  reason  for  this. 

It  may  seem  a  singular  observation  to 
say  that  we  are  not  generous  enough  to 
write  great  satire.  This,  however,  is  ap- 
proximately a  very  accurate  way  of  de- 
scribing the  case.  To  >vi'ite  great  satire, 
to  attack  a  man  so  that  he  feels  the  attack 
and  half  acknowledges  its  justice,  it  is 
necessary  to  have  a  certain  intellectual 
magnanimity  which  realises  the  merits  of 
b2  21 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

the  opponent  as  well  as  his  defects.  This 
is,  indeed,  only  another  way  of  putting  the 
simple  truth  that  in  order  to  attack  an 
army  we  must  know  not  only  its  weak 
points,  but  also  its  strong  points.  Eng- 
land in  the  present  season  and  spirit  fails 
in  satire  for  the  same  simple  reason  that 
it  fails  in  war :  it  despises  the  enemy.  In 
matters  of  battle  and  conquest  we  have 
got  firmly  rooted  in  our  minds  the  idea 
(an  idea  fit  for  the  philosophers  of  Bedlam) 
that  we  can  best  trample  on  a  people  by 
ignoring  all  the  particular  merits  which 
give  them  a  chance  of  trampling  upon  us. 
It  has  become  a  breach  of  etiquette  to 
praise  the  enemy ;  whereas  when  the  enemy 
is  strong  every  honest  scout  ought  to  praise 
the  enemy.  It  is  impossible  to  vanquish 
an  army  without  having  a  fiill  account  of 
its  strength.  It  is  impossible  to  satirise 
a  man  without  having  a  full  account  of  his 

22 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

virtues.  It  is  too  much  the  custom  in 
politics  to  describe  a  political  opponent  as 
utterly  inhumane,  as  utterly  careless  of  his 
country,  as  utterly  cynical,  which  no  man 
ever  was  since  the  beginning  of  the  world. 
This  kind  of  invective  may  often  have 
a  great  superficial  success :  it  may  hit 
the  mood  of  the  moment ;  it  may  raise 
excitement  and  applause ;  it  may  impress 
millions.  But  there  is  one  man  among 
all  those  millions  whom  it  does  not  impress, 
whom  it  hardly  even  touches ;  that  is  the 
man  against  whom  it  is  directed.  The 
one  person  for  whom  the  whole  satire  has 
been  written  in  vain  is  the  man  whom  it 
is  the  whole  object  of  the  institution  of 
satire  to  reach.  He  knows  that  such  a 
description  of  him  is  not  true.  He  knows 
that  he  is  not  utterly  unpatriotic,  or  utterly 
self-seeking,  or  utterly  barbarous  and  re- 
vengeful.    He  knows  that  he  is  an  ordinary 

23 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

man,  and  that  he  can  count  as  many  kindly 
memories,  as  many  humane  instincts,  as 
many  hours  of  decent  work  and  responsi- 
bility as  any  other  ordinary  man.  But 
behind  all  this  he  has  his  real  weaknesses, 
the  real  ironies  of  his  soul :  behind  all  these 
ordinary  merits  lie  the  mean  compromises, 
the  craven  silences,  the  sullen  vanities, 
the  secret  brutalities,  the  unmanly  visions 
of  revenge.  It  is  to  these  that  satire 
should  reach  if  it  is  to  touch  the  man  at 
whom  it  is  aimed.  And  to  reach  these 
it  must  pass  and  salute  a  whole  army  of 
virtues. 

If  we  turn  to  the  great  English  satirists 
of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries, 
for  example,  we  find  that  they  had  this 
rough  but  firm  grasp  of  the  size  and 
strength,  the  value  and  the  best  points  of 
their  adversary.  Dry  den,  before  hewing 
Ahitophel  in  pieces,  gives  a  splendid  and 

24 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

spirited  account  of  the  insane  valour  and 
inspired  cunning  of  the 

'  daring  pilot  in  extremity,' 
who  was  more  untrustworthy  in  calm  than 
in  storm,  and 

'  Steered  too  near  the  rocks  to  boast 

his  wit.' 
The  whole  is,  so  far  as  it  goes,  a  sound  and 
picturesque  version  of  the  great  Shaftes- 
bury. It  would,  in  many  ways,  serve  as 
a  very  sound  and  picturesque  account  of 
Lord  Randolph  Churchill.  But  here  comes 
in  very  pointedly  the  difference  between 
our  modern  attempts  at  satire  and  the 
ancient  achievement  of  it.  The  opponents 
of  Lord  Randolph  Churchill,  both  Liberal 
and  Conservative,  did  not  satirise  him 
nobly  and  honestly,  as  one  of  those  great 
wits  to  madness  near  allied.  They  repre- 
sented him  as  a  mere  puppy,  a  silly  and 
irreverent  upstart  whose  impudence  sup- 

25 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

plied  the  lack  of  policy  and  character. 
Churchill  had  grave  and  even  gross  faults, 
a  certain  coarseness,  a  certain  hard  boyish 
asserti  veness,  a  certain  lack  of  magnanimity, 
a  certain  peculiar  patrician  vulgarity.  But 
he  was  a  much  larger  man  than  satire 
depicted  him,  and  therefore  the  satire 
could  not  and  did  not  overwhelm  him. 
And  here  we  have  the  cause  of  the  failure 
of  contemporary  satire,  that  it  has  no 
magnanimity,  that  is  to  say,  no  patience. 
It  cannot  endure  to  be  told  that  its 
opponent  has  his  strong  points,  just  as 
Mr  Chamberlain  could  not  endure  to  be 
told  that  the  Boers  had  a  regular  army. 
It  can  be  content  with  nothing  except 
persuading  itself  that  its  opponent  is 
utterly  bad  or  utterly  stupid — that  is, 
that  he  is  what  he  is  not  and  what  nobody 
else  is.  If  we  take  any  prominent  politician 
of  the   day — such,  for   example,   as   Sir 

26 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

William    Harcourt — we   shall   find   that 
this  is  the  point  in  which  all  party  in- 
vective  fails.      The   Tory  satire  at   the 
expense  of  Sir  William  Harcourt  is  always 
desperately  endeavouring  to  represent  that 
he  is  inept,  that  he  makes  a  fool  of  himself, 
that   he   is   disagreeable  and  disgraceful 
and  untrustworthy.    The  defect  of  all  this 
is  that   we  all  know  that  it  is  untrue. 
Everyone  knows  that  Sir  William  Har- 
court is  not  inept,  but  is  almost  the  ablest 
Parliamentarian    now    alive.      Everyone 
knows  that  he  is  not  disagreeable  or  dis- 
graceful, but  a  gentleman  of  the  old  school 
who  is  on  excellent  social  terms  with  his 
antagonists.      Everyone   knows   that   he 
is  not  untrustworthy,  but  a  man  of  un- 
impeachable honour  who  is  much  trusted. 
Above  all,  he  knows  it  himself,  and  is 
therefore  affected  by  the   satire  exactly 
as  any  one  of  us  would  be  if  we  were 

27 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

accused  of  being  black  or  of  keeping  a 
shop  for  the  receiving  of  stolen  goods. 
We  might  be  angry  at  the  libel,  but 
not  at  the  satire ;  for  a  man  is  angry  at 
a  libel  because  it  is  false,  but  at  a  satire 
because  it  is  true. 

Mr  Henley  and  his  young  men  are  very 
fond  of  invective  and  satire  :  if  they  wish 
to  know  the  reason  of  their  failure  in  these 
things,  they  need  only  turn  to  the  opening 
of  Pope'*s  superb  attack  upon  Addison. 
The  Henleyite's  idea  of  satirising  a  man 
is  to  express  a  violent  contempt  for  him, 
and  by  the  heat  of  this  to  persuade  others 
and  himself  that  the  man  is  contemptible. 
I  remember  reading  a  satiric  attack  on  Mr 
Gladstone  by  one  of  the  young  anarchic 
Tories,  which  began  by  asserting  that  Mr 
Gladstone  was  a  bad  public  speaker.  If 
these  people  would,  as  I  have  said,  go 
quietly  and  read   Pope's  'Atticus,'  they 

28 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

would  see  how  a  great  satirist  approaches 

a  great  enemy : 

'  Peace  to  all  such  !     But  were  there  one 

whose  fires 
True  genius   kindles,  and  fair  fame  in- 
spires, 
Blest  with  each  talent,  and  each  art  to 

please, 
And  born  to  write,  converse,  and  live  with 
ease. 

Should  such  a  man ' 

And  then  follows  the  torrent  of  that  terrible 
criticism.  Pope  was  not  such  a  fool  as  to 
try  to  make  out  that  Addison  was  a  fool. 
He  knew  that  Addison  was  not  a  fool,  and 
he  knew  that  Addison  knew  it.  But  hatred, 
in  Pope's  case,  had  become  so  great,  and,  I 
was  almost  going  to  say,  so  pure,  that  it 
illuminated  all  things,  as  love  illuminates 
all  things.  He  said  what  was  really  wrong 
with  Addison ;  and  in  calm  and  clear  and 

29 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

everlasting  colours  he  painted  the  picture 
of  the  evil  of  the  literary  temperament : 
'  Bear  like  the  Turk,  no  brother  near  the 

throne, 
View  him  with  scornful,  yet  with  jealous 

eyes, 
And  hate  for  arts  that  caused  himself  to  rise. 

•  •  •  •  •  • 

IJke  Cato  give  his  little  Senate  laws. 
And  sit  attentive  to  his  own  applause. 
While  wits  and  templars  every  sentence 

raise. 
And  wonder  with  a  foolish  face  of  praise." 
This  is  the  kind  of  thing  which  really  goes 
to  the  mark  at  which  it  aims.  It  is  pene- 
trated with  sorrow  and  a  kind  of  reverence, 
and  it  is  addressed  directly  to  a  man. 
This  is  no  mock-tournament  to  gain  the 
applause  of  the  crowd.  It  is  a  deadly 
duel  by  the  lonely  seashore. 

In  current  political  materialism  there  is 

30 


POPE  AND  ART  OF  SATIRE 

everywhere  the  assumption  that,  without 
understanding  anything  of  his  case  or  his 
merits,  we  can  benefit  a  man  practically. 
Without  understanding  his  case  and  his 
merits,  we  cannot  even  hurt  him. 


31 


STEVENSON* 


A  RECENT  incident  has  finally  convinced 
us  that  Stevenson  was,  as  we  suspected,  a 
great  man.  We  knew  from  recent  books 
that  we  have  noticed,  from  the  scorn  of 
'  Ephemera  Critica'  and  Mr  George  Moore, 
that  Stevenson  had  the  first  essential 
qualification  of  a  great  man  :  that  of  being 

*  '  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  :  A  Life  Study  in 
Criticism.'  By  H.  Belly se  Baildon.  Chatto  & 
Windus. 

32 


STEVENSON 

misunderstood  by  his  opponents.  But  from 
the  book  which  Messrs  Chatto  &  Windus 
have  issued,  in  the  same  binding  as  Steven- 
son's works,  '  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,"*  by 
Mr  H.  Bellyse  Baildon,  we  learn  that  he 
has  the  other  essential  qualification,  that 
of  being  misunderstood  by  his  admirers. 
Mr  Baildon  has  many  interesting  things 
to  tell  us  about  Stevenson  himself,  whom 
he  knew  at  college.  Nor  are  his  criticisms 
by  any  means  valueless.  That  upon  the 
plays,  especially  'Beau  Austin,'  is  remark- 
ably thoughtful  and  true.  But  it  is  a  very 
singular  fact,  and  goes  far,  as  we  say,  to 
prove  that  Stevenson  had  that  unfathom- 
able quality  which  belongs  to  the  great, 
that  this  admiring  student  of  Stevenson 
can  number  and  marshal  all  the  master's 
work  and  distribute  praise  and  blame  with 
decision  and  even  severity,  without  ever 
thinking  for  a  moment  of  the  principles 
c  33 


STEVENSON 

of  art  and  ethics  which  would  have  struck 
us  as  the  very  thing  that  Stevenson  nearly 
killed  himself  to  express. 

Mr  Baildon,  for  example,  is  perpetually 
lecturing  Stevenson  for  his  '  pessimism  "* ; 
surely  a  strange  charge  against  the  man 
who  has  done  more  than  any  modern  artist 
to  make  men  ashamed  of  their  shame  of 
life.  But  he  complains  that,  in  'The 
Master  of  Ballantrae "  and  '  Dr  Jekyll  and 
Mr  Hyde,'  Stevenson  gives  evil  a  final 
victory  over  good.  Now  if  there  was  one 
point  that  Stevenson  more  constantly  and 
passionately  emphasised  than  any  other 
it  was  that  we  must  worship  good  for  its 
own  value  and  beauty,  without  any  refer- 
ence whatever  to  victory  or  failure  in  space 
and  time.  '  Whatever  we  are  intended 
to  do,"*  he  said,  'we  are  not  intended  to 
succeed."  That  the  stars  in  their  courses 
fight  against  virtue,  that  humanity  is  in 

34 


STE\TENSON 

its  nature  a  forlorn  hope,  this  was  the  very 
spirit  that  through  the  whole  of  Stevenson's 
work  sounded  a  trumpet  to  all  the  brave. 
The  story  of  Henry  Durie  is  dark  enough, 
but  could  any  one  stand  beside  the  grave 
of  that  sodden  monomaniac  and  not  respect 
him  ?  It  is  strange  that  men  should  see 
sublime  inspiration  in  the  ruins  of  an  old 
church  and  see  none  in  the  ruins  of  a 
man. 

The  author  has  most  extraordinary  ideas 
about  Stevenson's  tales  of  blood  and  spoil ; 
he  appears  to  think  that  they  prove  Steven- 
son to  have  had  (we  use  Mr  Baildon's  own 
phrase)  a  kind  of '  homicidal  mania.'  '  He 
(Stevenson)  aiTives  pretty  much  at  the 
paradox  that  one  can  hardly  be  better 
employed  than  in  taking  life.'  Mr  Baildon 
might  as  well  say  that  Dr  Conan  Doyle 
delights  in  committing  inexplicable  crimes, 
that  Mr  Clark  Russell  is  a  notorious  pirate, 

35 


STEVENSON 

and  that  Mr  Wilkie  Collins  thought  that 
one  could  hardly  be  better  employed  than 
in  stealing  moonstones  and  falsifying  mar- 
riage registers.  But  Mr  Baildon  is  scarcely 
alone  in  this  error  :  few  people  have  under- 
stood properly  the  goriness  of  Stevenson. 
Stevenson  was  essentially  the  robust  school- 
boy who  draws  skeletons  and  gibbets  in 
his  Latin  grammar.  It  was  not  that  he 
took  pleasure  in  death,  but  that  he  took 
pleasure  in  life,  in  every  muscular  and 
emphatic  action  of  life,  even  if  it  were  an 
action  that  took  the  life  of  another. 

Let  us  suppose  that  one  gentleman  throws 
a  knife  at  another  gentleman  and  pins  him 
to  the  wall.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to 
remark  that  there  are  in  this  transaction 
two  somewhat  varying  personal  points  of 
view.  The  point  of  view  of  the  man 
pinned  is  the  tragic  and  moral  point  of 
view,  and  this  Stevenson  showed  clearly 

36 


STEVENSON 

that  he  understood  in  such  stories  as  '  The 
Master  of  Ballantrae '  and  '  Weir  of  Her- 
miston.'  But  there  is  another  view  of  the 
matter — that  in  which  the  whole  act  is  an 
abrupt  and  brilliant  explosion  of  bodily 
vitality,  like  breaking  a  rock  with  a  blow 
of  a  hammer,  or  just  clearing  a  five- barred 
gate.  This  is  the  standpoint  of  romance, 
and  it  is  the  soul  of  '  Treasure  Island '  and 
'  The  Wrecker/  It  was  not,  indeed,  that 
Stevenson  loved  men  less,  but  that  he  loved 
clubs  and  pistols  more.  He  had,  in  truth, 
in  the  devouring  universalism  of  his  soul, 
a  positive  love  for  inanimate  objects  such 
as  has  not  been  known  since  St  Francis 
called  the  sun  brother  and  the  well  sister. 
We  feel  that  he  was  actually  in  love  with 
the  wooden  crutch  that  Silver  sent  hurtling 
in  the  sunlight,  with  the  box  that  Billy 
Bones  left  at  the  '  Admiral  Benbow,'  with 
the  knife  that  Wicks  drove  through  his 
c2  37 


STEVENSON 

own  hand  and  the  table.  There  is  always 
in  his  work  a  certain  clean-cut  angularity 
which  makes  us  remember  that  he  was 
fond  of  cutting  wood  with  an  axe. 

Stevenson's  new  biographer,  however, 
cannot  make  any  allowance  for  this  deep- 
rooted  poetry  of  mere  sight  and  touch. 
He  is  always  imputing  something  to 
Stevenson  as  a  crime  which  Stevenson  really 
professed  as  an  object.  He  says  of  that 
glorious  riot  of  horror,  '  The  Destroying 
Angel,'  in  'The  Dynamiter,'  that  it  is 
'  highly  fantastic  and  putting  a  strain  on 
our  credulity.'  This  is  rather  like  de- 
scribing the  travels  of  Baron  Munchausen 
as  'unconvincing.'  The  whole  story  of 
'  The  Dynamiter '  is  a  kind  of  humorous 
nightmare,  and  even  in  that  story  'The 
Destroying  Angel'  is  supposed  to  be  an 
extravagant  lie  made  up  on  the  spur  of 
the  moment.    It  is  a  dream  within  a  dream, 

38 


STEVENSON 

and  to  accuse  it  of  improbability  is  like 
accusing  the  sky  of  being  blue.  But  Mr 
Baildon,  whether  from  hasty  reading  or 
natural  difference  of  taste,  cannot  in  the 
least  comprehend  the  rich  and  romantic 
irony  of  Stevenson's  London  stories.  He 
actually  says  of  that  portentous  monument 
of  humour,  Prince  Florizel  of  Bohemia, 
that,  'though  evidently  admired  by  his 
creator,  he  is  to  me  on  the  whole  rather 
an  irritating  presence.  "*  From  this  we  are 
almost  driven  to  believe  (though  desper- 
ately and  against  our  will)  that  Mr  Baildon 
thinks  that  Prince  Florizel  is  to  be 
taken  seriously,  as  if  he  were  a  man  in 
real  life.  For  ourselves.  Prince  Florizel 
is  almost  our  favourite  character  in  fiction  ; 
but  we  willingly  add  the  proviso  that  if 
we  met  him  in  real  life  we  should  kill 
him. 

The  fact  is,  that  the  whole  mass  of 

39 


STEVENSON 

Stevenson''s  spiritual  and  intellectual  virtues 
had  been  partly  frustrated  by  one  addi- 
tional virtue — that  of  artistic  dexterity. 
If  he  had  chalked  up  his  great  message  on 
a  wall,  like  Walt  Whitman,  in  large  and 
straggling  letters,  it  would  have  startled 
men  like  a  blasphemy.  But  he  wrote  his 
light-headed  paradoxes  in  so  flowing  a 
copy-book  hand  that  every  one  supposed 
they  must  be  copy-book  sentiments.  He  suf- 
fered from  his  versatility,  not,  as  is  loosely 
said,  by  not  doing  every  department  well 
enough,  but  by  doing  every  department 
too  well.  As  a  child,  cockney,  pirate,  or 
Puritan,  his  disguises  were  so  good  that 
most  people  could  not  see  the  same  man 
under  all.  It  is  an  unjust  fact  that  if  a 
man  can  play  the  fiddle,  give  legal  opinions, 
and  black  boots  just  tolerably,  he  is  called 
an  Admirable  Crichton,  but  if  he  does  all 
three  thoroughly  well,  he  is  apt  to  be  re- 

40 


STEVENSON 

garded,  in  the  several  departments  as  a 
common  fiddler,  a  common  lawyer,  and  a 
common  boot-black.  This  is  what  has 
happened  in  the  case  of  Stevenson.  If  '  Dr 
Jekyll,' '  The  Master  of  Ballantrae,'  '  The 
Child's  Garden  of  Verses,'  and  '  Across  the 
Plains'  had  been  each  of  them  one  shade 
less  perfectly  done  than  they  were,  every- 
one would  have  seen  that  they  were  all 
parts  of  the  same  message  ;  but  by  succeed- 
ing in  the  proverbial  miracle  of  being  in 
five  places  at  once,  he  has  naturally  con- 
vinced others  that  he  was  five  different 
people.  But  the  real  message  of  Stevenson 
was  as  simple  as  that  of  Mahomet,  as  moral 
as  that  of  Dante,  as  confident  as  that 
of  Whitman,  and  as  practical  as  that  of 
James  Watt. 

The  conception  which  unites  the  whole 
varied  work  of  Stevenson  was  that  romance, 
or  the  vision  of  the  possibilities  of  things, 

41 


STEVENSON 

was  far  more  important  than  mere  occur- 
rences :  that  one  was  the  soul  of  our  life, 
the  other  the  body,  and  that  the  soul  was 
the  precious  thing.  The  germ  of  all  his 
stories  lies  in  the  idea  that  every  landscape 
or  scrap  of  scenery  has  a  soul :  and  that 
soul  is  a  story.  Standing  before  a  stunted 
orchard  with  a  broken  stone  wall,  we  may 
know  as  a  mere  fact  that  no  one  has  been 
through  it  but  an  elderly  female  cook. 
But  everything  exists  in  the  human  soul : 
that  orchard  grows  in  our  own  brain,  and 
there  it  is  the  shrine  and  theatre  of  some 
strange  chance  between  a  girl  and  a  ragged 
poet  and  a  mad  farmer.  Stevenson  stands 
for  the  conception  that  ideas  are  the  real 
incidents  :  that  our  fancies  are  our  adven- 
tures. To  think  of  a  cow  with  wings  is 
essentially  to  have  met  one.  And  this  is 
the  reason  for  his  wide  diversities  of  nar- 
rative :  he  had  to  make  one  story  as  rich 

42 


STEVENSON 

as  a  ruby  sunset,  another  as  grey  as  a  hoary 
monolith :  for  the  story  was  the  soul,  or 
rather  the  meaning,  of  the  bodily  vision. 
It  is  quite  inappropriate  to  judge  'The 
Teller  of  Tales'*  (as  the  Samoans  called 
him)  by  the  particular  novels  he  wrote, 
as  one  would  judge  Mr  George  Moore 
by  '  Esther  Waters.'  These  novels  were 
only  the  two  or  three  of  his  souFs  ad- 
ventures that  he  happened  to  tell.  But 
he  died  with  a  thousand  stories  in  his 
heart. 


43 


ROSTAND 


When  'Cyrano  de  Bergerac'  was  published, 
it  bore  the  subordinate  title  of  a  heroic 
comedy.  We  have  no  tradition  in  English 
literature  which  would  justify  us  in  calling 
a  comedy  heroic,  though  there  was  once 
a  poet  who  called  a  comedy  divine.  By 
the  current  modern  conception,  the  hero 
has  his  place  in  a  tragedy,  and  the  one 
kind  of  strength  which  is  systematically 
denied  to  him  is  the  strength  to  succeed. 

44 


ROSTAND 

That  the  power  of  a  man''s  spirit  might 
possibly  go  to  the  length  of  turning  a  tragedy 
into  a  comedy  is  not  admitted ;  neverthe- 
less, almost  all  the  primitive  legends  of  the 
world  are  comedies,  not  only  in  the  sense 
that  they  have  a  happy  ending,  but  in  the 
sense  that  they  are  based  upon  a  certain 
optimistic  assumption  that  the  hero  is 
destined  to  be  the  destroyer  of  the  mon- 
ster. Singularly  enough,  this  modern  idea 
of  the  essential  disastrous  character  of  life, 
when  seriously  considered,  connects  itself 
with  a  hyper-aesthetic  view  of  tragedy  and 
comedy  which  is  largely  due  to  the  in- 
fluence of  modern  France,  from  which  the 
great  heroic  comedies  of  Monsieur  Rostand 
have  come.  The  French  genius  has  an 
instinct  for  remedying  its  own  evil  work, 
and  France  gives  always  the  best  cure  for 
'  Frenchiness.'  ^  The  idea  of  comedy  which 
is  held  in  England  by  the  school  which 

45 


ROSTAND 

pays  most  attention  to  the  technical  nice- 
ties of  art  is  a  view  which  renders  such 
an  idea  as  that  of  heroic  comedy  quite 
impossible.  The  fundamental  conception 
in  the  minds  of  the  majority  of  our  younger 
writers  is  that  comedy  is, '  par  excellence/ 
a  fragile  thing.  It  is  conceived  to  be  a 
conventional  world  of  the  most  absolutely 
delicate  and  gimcrack  description.  Such 
stories  as  Mr  Max  Beerbohm's  '  Happy 
Hypocrite'  are  conceptions  which  would 
vanish  or  fall  into  utter  nonsense  if  viewed 
by  one  single  degree  too  seriously.  But 
great  comedy,  the  comedy  of  Shakespeare 
or  Sterne,  not  only  can  be,  but  must  be, 
taken  seriously.  There  is  nothing  to  which 
a  man  must  give  himself  up  with  more 
faith  and  self-abandonment  than  to  genuine 
laughter.  In  such  comedies  one  laughs 
with  the  heroes  and  not  at  them.  The 
humour  which  steeps  the  stories  of  Fal- 

46 


ROSTAND 

staff  and  Uncle  Toby  is  a  cosmic  and 
philosophic  humour,  a  geniality,  which  goes 
down  to  the  depths.  It  is  not  superficial 
reading,  it  is  not  even,  strictly  speaking, 
light  reading.  Our  sympathies  are  as  much 
committed  to  the  characters  as  if  they 
were  the  predestined  victims  in  a  Greek 
tragedy.  The  modern  writer  of  comedies 
may  be  said  to  boast  of  the  brittleness  of 
his  characters.  He  seems  always  on  the 
eve  of  knocking  his  puppets  to  pieces. 
When  John  Oliver  Hobbes  wrote  for  the 
first  time  a  comedy  of  serious  emotions, 
she  named  it,  with  a  thinly-disguised  con- 
tempt for  her  own  work,  '  A  Sentimental 
Comedy.'  The  ground  of  this  conception 
of  the  artificiality  of  comedy  is  a  pro- 
found pessimism.  Life  in  the  eyes  of  these 
mournful  buffoons  is  itself  an  utterly  tragic 
thing;  comedy  must  be  as  hollow  as  a 
grinning  mask.     It  is  a  refuge  from  the 

47 


ROSTAND 

world,  and  not  even,  properly  speaking, 
a  part  of  it.  Their  wit  is  a  thin  sheet 
of  shining  ice  over  the  eternal  waters  of 
bitterness. 

'  Cyrano  de  Bergerac '  came  to  us  as  the 
new  decoration  of  an  old  truth,  that  merri- 
ment was  one  of  the  world's  natural 
flowers,  and  not  one  of  its  exotics.  The 
gigantesque  levity,  the  flamboyant  elo- 
quence, the  Rabelaisian  puns  and  digres- 
sions were  seen  to  be  once  more  what 
they  had  been  in  Rabelais,  the  mere  out- 
bursts of  a  human  sympathy  and  bravado 
as  old  and  solid  as  the  stars.  The  human 
spirit  demanded  wit  as  headlong  and 
haughty  as  its  will.  All  was  expressed  in 
the  words  of  Cyrano  at  his  highest  moment 
of  happiness.  '  II  me  faut  des  geants.' 
An  essential  aspect  of  this  question  of 
heroic  comedy  is  the  question  of  drama 
in  rhyme.     There  is  nothing  that  affords 

48 


ROSTAND 

so  easy  a  point  of  attack  for  the  dramatic 
realist  as  the  conduct  of  a  play  in  verse. 
According  to  his  canons,  it  is  indeed 
absurd  to  represent  a  number  of  characters 
facing  some  terrible  crisis  in  their  lives 
by  capping  rhymes  like  a  party  playing 
'  bouts  rimes/  In  his  eyes  it  must  appear 
somewhat  ridiculous  that  two  enemies 
taunting  each  other  with  insupportable 
insults  should  obligingly  provide  each  other 
with  metrical  spacing  and  neat  and  con- 
venient rhymes.  But  the  whole  of  this 
view  rests  finally  upon  the  fact  that  few 
persons,  if  any,  to-day  understand  what  is 
meant  by  a  poetical  play.  It  is  a  singular 
thing  that  those  poetical  plays  which  are 
now  written  in  England  by  the  most 
advanced  students  of  the  drama  follow 
exclusively  the  lines  of  Maeterlinck,  and 
use  verse  and  rhyme  for  the  adornment 
of  a  profoundly  tragic  theme.  But  rhyme 
D  49 


ROSTAND 

has  a  supreme  appropriateness  for  the 
treatment  of  the  higher  comedy.  The 
land  of  heroic  comedy  is,  as  it  were,  a 
paradise  of  lovers,  in  which  it  is  not 
difficult  to  imagine  that  men  could  talk 
poetry  all  day  long.  It  is  far  more  con- 
ceivable that  men''s  speech  should  flower 
naturally  into  these  harmonious  forms, 
when  they  are  filled  with  the  essential 
spirit  of  youth,  than  when  they  are  sitting 
gloomily  in  the  presence  of  immemorial 
destiny.  The  great  error  consists  in  sup- 
posing that  poetry  is  an  unnatural  form 
of  language.  We  should  all  like  to  speak 
poetry  at  the  moment  when  we  truly  live, 
and  if  we  do  not  speak  it,  it  is  because  we 
have  an  impediment  in  our  speech.  It  is 
not  song  that  is  the  narrow  or  artificial 
thing,  it  is  conversation  that  is  a  broken 
and  stammering  attempt  at  song.  When 
we  see  men  in  a  spiritual  extravaganza, 

50 


ROSTAND 

like  Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  speaking  in 
rhyme,  it  is  not  our  language  disguised 
or  distorted,  but  our  language  rounded 
and  made  whole.  Rhymes  answer  each 
other  as  the  sexes  in  flowers  and  in 
humanity  answer  each  other.  Men  do 
not  speak  so,  it  is  true.  Even  when  they 
are  inspired  or  in  love  they  talk  inanities. 
But  the  poetic  comedy  does  not  misrepre- 
sent the  speech  one  half  so  much,  as  the 
speech  misrepresents  the  soul.  Monsieur 
Rostand  showed  even  more  than  his  usual 
insight  when  he  called  '  Cyrano  de  Ber- 
gerac' a  comedy,  despite  the  fact  that, 
strictly  speaking,  it  ends  with  disappoint- 
ment and  death.  The  essence  of  tragedy 
is  a  spiritual  breakdown  or  decline,  and 
in  the  great  French  play  the  spiritual 
sentiment  mounts  unceasingly  until  the 
last  line.  It  is  not  the  facts  themselves, 
but  our  feeling  about  them,  that  makes 

51 


ROSTAND 

tragedy  and  comedy,  and  death  is  more 
joyful  in  Rostand  than  hfe  in  Maeter- 
linck. The  same  apparent  contradiction 
holds  good  in  the  case  of  the  drama  of 
'L'Aiglon.'  Although  the  hero  is  a 
weakling,  the  subject  a  fiasco,  the  end  a 
premature  death  and  a  personal  disillusion- 
ment, yet,  in  spite  of  this  theme,  which 
might  have  been  chosen  for  its  depressing 
qualities,  the  unconquerable  paean  of  the 
praise  of  things,  the  ungovernable  gaiety 
of  the  poet"'s  song  swells  so  high  that  at 
the  end  it  seems  to  drown  all  the  weak 
voices  of  the  characters  in  one  crashing 
chorus  of  great  things  and  great  men.  A 
multitude  of  mottoes  might  be  taken  from 
the  play  to  indicate  and  illustrate,  not 
only  its  own  spirit,  but  much  of  the  spirit 
of  modern  life.  When  in  the  vision  of 
the  field  of  Wagram  the  horrible  voices 
of  the  wounded  cry  out,  'Les  corbeaux, 

52 


ROSTAND 

les  corbeaux,"  the  Duke,  overwhelmed 
with  a  nightmare  of  hideous  trivialities, 
cries  out,  '  Ou,  ou  sont  les  aigles  ?  **  That 
antithesis  might  stand  alone  as  an  in- 
vocation at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth 
century  to  the  spirit  of  heroic  comedy. 
When  an  ex -General  of  Napoleon  is 
asked  his  reason  for  having  betrayed  the 
Emperor  he  replies,  '  La  fatigue,"  and  at 
that  a  veteran  private  of  the  Great  Army 
rushes  forward,  and  crying  passionately 
'  Et  nous  ? '  pours  out  a  terrible  descrip- 
tion of  the  life  lived  by  the  common 
soldier.  To-day  when  pessimism  is  almost 
as  much  a  symbol  of  wealth  and  fashion 
as  jewels  or  cigars,  when  the  pampered 
heirs  of  the  ages  can  sum  up  life  in  few 
other  words  but  '  la  fatigue,'  there  might 
surely  come  a  cry  from  the  vast  mass  of 
common  humanity  from  the  beginning  '  et 
nous  ?  ■*  It  is  this  potentiality  for  enthu- 
d2  53 


ROSTAND 

siasm  among  the  mass  of  men  that  makes 
the  function  of  comedy  at  once  common 
and  sublime.  Shakespeare's  '  Much  Ado 
about  Nothing'  is  a  great  comedy,  be- 
cause behind  it  is  the  whole  pressure 
of  that  love  of  love  which  is  the 
youth  of  the  world,  which  is  common 
to  all  the  young,  especially  to  those 
who  swear  they  will  die  bachelors  and 
old  maids.  'Love's  Labour's  Lost  '  is 
filled  with  the  same  energy,  and  there 
it  falls  even  more  definitely  into  the 
scope  of  our  subject  since  it  is  a 
comedy  in  rhyme  in  which  all  men  speak 
lyrically  as  naturally  as  the  birds  sing  in 
pairing  time.  What  the  love  of  love  is  to 
the  Shakespearian  comedies,  that  other  and 
more  mysterious  human  passion,  the  love 
of  death,  is  to  '  L'Aiglon.'  Whether  we 
shall  ever  have  in  England  a  new  tradition 
of  poetic  comedy  it  is  difficult  at  present 

51 


ROSTAND 

to  say,  but  we  shall  assuredly  never  have  it 
until  we  realise  that  comedy  is  built  upon 
everlasting  foundations  in  the  nature  of 
things,  that  it  is  not  a  thing  too  light  to 
capture,  but  too  deep  to  plumb.  Monsieur 
Rostand,  in  his  description  of  the  Battle 
of  Wagram,  does  not  shrink  from  bringing 
about  the  Duke's  ears  the  frightful  voices 
of  actual  battle,  of  men  torn  by  crows,  and 
suffocated  with  blood,  but  when  the  Duke, 
terrified  at  these  dreadful  appeals,  asks 
them  for  their  final  word,  they  all  cry  to- 
gether, '  Vive  TEmpereur  ! '  Monsieur  Ros- 
tand, perhaps,  did  not  know  that  he  was 
writing  an  allegor}\  To  me  that  field  of 
Wagram  is  the  field  of  the  modern  war 
of  literature.  We  hear  nothing  but  the 
voices  of  pain ;  the  whole  is  one  phono- 
graph of  horror.  It  is  right  that  we  should 
hear  these  things,  it  is  right  that  not  one 
of  them   should   be   silenced;  but  these 

55 


ROSTAND 

cries  of  distress  are  not  in  life  as  they  are 
in  modern  art  the  only  voices,  they  are 
the  voices  of  men,  but  not  the  voice  of 
man.  When  questioned  finally  and  seri- 
ously as  to  their  conception  of  their  destiny, 
men  have  from  the  beginning  of  time 
answered  in  a  thousand  philosophies  and 
religions  with  a  single  voice  and  in  a 
sense  most  sacred  and  tremendous,  '  Vive 
TEmpereur.' 


56 


CHARLES  II 


There  are  a  great  many  bonds  which  still 
connect  us  with  Charles  II.,  one  of  the 
idlest  men  of  one  of  the  idlest  epochs. 
Among  other  things  Charles  II.  repre- 
sented one  thing  which  is  very  rare  and 
very  satisfying ;  he  was  a  real  and  con- 
sistent sceptic.  Scepticism  both  in  its 
advantages  and  disadvantages  is  greatly 
misunderstood  in  our  time.  There  is  a 
curious  idea  abroad  that  scepticism  has 

57 


CHARLES   II 

some  connection  with  such  theories  as 
materialism  and  atheism  and  secularism. 
This  is  of  course  a  mistake;  the  true 
sceptic  has  nothing  to  do  with  these 
theories  simply  because  they  are  theories. 
The  true  sceptic  is  as  much  a  spiritualist 
as  he  is  a  materialist.  He  thinks  that 
the  savage  dancing  round  an  African  idol 
stands  quite  as  good  a  chance  of  being 
right  as  Darwin.  He  thinks  that  mystic- 
ism is  every  bit  as  rational  as  rationalism. 
He  has  indeed  the  most  profound  doubts 
as  to  whether  St  Matthew  wrote  his  own 
gospel.  But  he  has  quite  equally  pro- 
found doubts  as  to  whether  the  tree  he  is 
looking  at  is  a  tree  and  not  a  rhino- 
ceros. 

This  is  the  real  meaning  of  that  mystery 
which  appears  so  prominently  in  the  lives 
of  great  sceptics,  which  appears  with 
special  prominence  in  the  life  of  Charles  XL 

58 


CHARLES    II 

I  mean  their  constant  oscillation  between 
atheism  and  Roman  Catholicism.  Roman 
Catholicism  is  indeed  a  great  and  fixed 
and  formidable  system,  but  so  is  atheism. 
Atheism  is  indeed  the  most  daring  of  all 
dogmas,  more  daring  than  the  vision  of  a 
palpable  day  of  judgment.  For  it  is  the 
assertion  of  a  universal  negative ;  for  a 
man  to  say  that  there  is  no  God  in  the 
universe  is  like  saying  that  there  are  no 
insects  in  any  of  the  stars. 

Thus  it  was  with  that  wholesome  and 
systematic  sceptic,  Charles  II.  When 
he  took  the  Sacrament  according  to  the 
forms  of  the  Roman  Church  in  his  last 
hour  he  was  acting  consistently  as  a 
philosopher.  The  wafer  might  not  be 
God ;  similarly  it  might  not  be  a  wafer. 
To  the  genuine  and  poetical  sceptic  the 
whole  world  is  incredible,  with  its  bulbous 
mountains  and  its  fantastic  trees.     The 

59 


CHARLES    II 

whole  order  of  things  is  as  outrageous  as 
any  miracle  which  could  presume  to  violate 
it.  Transubstantiation  might  be  a  dream, 
but  if  it  was,  it  was  assuredly  a  dream 
within  a  dream.  Charles  II.  sought  to 
guard  himself  against  hell  fire  because  he 
could  not  think  hell  itself  more  fantastic 
than  the  world  as  it  was  revealed  by 
science.  The  priest  crept  up  the  staircase, 
the  doors  were  closed,  the  few  of  the 
faithful  who  were  present  hushed  them- 
selves respectfully,  and  so,  with  every 
circumstance  of  secrecy  and  sanctity,  with 
the  cross  uplifted  and  the  prayers  poured 
out,  was  consummated  the  last  great  act 
of  logical  unbelief. 

The  problem  of  Charles  II.  consists  in 
this,  that  he  has  scarcely  a  moral  virtue 
to  his  name,  and  yet  he  attracts  us 
morally.  We  feel  that  some  of  the  vir- 
tues have  been  dropped  out  in  the  lists 

60 


CHARLES    II 

made  by  all  the  saints  and  sages,  and 
that  Charles  II.  was  pre-eminently  suc- 
cessful in  these  wild  and  unmentionable 
virtues.  The  real  truth  of  this  matter 
and  the  real  relation  of  Charles  II.  to  the 
moral  ideal  is  worth  somewhat  more  ex- 
haustive study. 

It  is  a  commonplace  that  the  Restora- 
tion movement  can  only  be  understood 
when  considered  as  a  reaction  against 
Puritanism.  But  it  is  insufficiently  real- 
ised that  the  tyranny  which  half  frustrated 
all  the  good  work  of  Puritanism  was  of  a 
very  peculiar  kind.  It  was  not  the  fire  of 
Puritanism,  the  exultation  in  sobriety, 
the  frenzy  of  a  restraint,  which  passed 
away ;  that  still  burns  in  the  heart  of 
England,  only  to  be  quenched  by  the  final 
overwhelming  sea.  But  it  is  seldom  re- 
membered that  the  Puritans  were  in  their 
day  emphatically  intellectual  bullies,  that 

61 


CHARLES    II 

they  relied  swaggeringly  on  the  logical 
necessity  of  Calvinism,  that  they  bound 
omnipotence  itself  in  the  chains  of  syllog- 
ism. The  Puritans  fell,  through  the 
damning  fact  that  they  had  a  complete 
theory  of  life,  through  the  eternal 
paradox  that  a  satisfactory  explanation 
can  never  satisfy.  Like  Brutus  and  the 
logical  Romans,  like  the  logical  French 
Jacobins,  like  the  logical  English  utili- 
tarians, they  taught  the  lesson  that  men's 
wants  have  always  been  right  and  their 
arguments  always  wrong.  Reason  is 
always  a  kind  of  brute  force ;  those  who 
appeal  to  the  head  rather  than  the  heart, 
however  pallid  and  polite,  are  necessarily 
men  of  violence.  We  speak  of  '  touching ' 
a  man's  heart,  but  we  can  do  nothing  to 
his  head  but  hit  it.  The  tyranny  of  the 
Puritans  over  the  bodies  of  men  was 
comparatively    a    trifle ;     pikes,    bullets, 

62 


CHARLES   II 

and  conflagrations  are  comparatively  fa 
trifle.  Their  real  tyranny  was  the  tyranny 
of  aggressive  reason  over  the  cowed  and 
demoralised  human  spirit.  Their  brood- 
ing and  raving  can  be  forgiven,  can  in 
truth  be  loved  and  reverenced,  for  it  is 
humanity  on  fire;  hatred  can  be  genial, 
madness  can  be  homely.  The  Puritans 
fell,  not  because  they  were  fanatics,  but 
because  they  were  rationalists. 

When  we  consider  these  things,  when 
we  remember  that  Puritanism,  which 
means  in  our  day  a  moral  and  almost 
temperamental  attitude,  meant  in  that 
day  a  singularly  arrogant  logical  attitude, 
we  shall  comprehend  a  little  more  the 
grain  of  good  that  lay  in  the  vulgarity 
and  triviality  of  the  Restoration.  The 
Restoration,  of  which  Charles  II.  was  a 
pre-eminent  type,  was  in  part  a  revolt 
of  all   the   chaotic  and   unclassed   parts 

63 


CHARLES    II 

of  human  nature,  the  parts  that  are  left 
over,  and  will  always  be  left  over,  by 
every  rationalistic  system  of  life.  This 
does  not  merely  account  for  the  revolt  of 
the  vices  and  of  that  empty  recklessness 
and  horseplay  which  is  sometimes  more 
irritating  than  any  vice.  It  accounts  also 
for  the  return  of  the  virtue  of  politeness, 
for  that  also  is  a  nameless  thing  ignored 
by  logical  codes.  Politeness  has  indeed 
about  it  something  mystical ;  like  religion, 
it  is  everywhere  understood  and  nowhere 
defined.  Charles  is  not  entirely  to  be 
despised  because,  as  the  type  of  this 
movement,  he  let  himself  float  upon  this 
new  tide  of  politeness.  There  was  some 
moral  and  social  value  in  his  perfection  in 
little  things.  He  could  not  keep  the 
Ten  Commandments,  but  he  kept  the  ten 
thousand  commandments.  His  name  is 
unconnected  with  any  great  acts  of  duty 

64 


CHARLES    II 

or  sacrifice,  but  it  is  connected  with  a 
great  many  of  those  acts  of  magnanimous 
poUteness,  of  a  kind  of  dramatic  delicacy, 
which  lie  on  the  dim  borderland  between 
morality  and  art.  'Charles  II.,'  said 
Thackeray,  with  unerring  brevity,  '  was  a 
rascal  but  not  a  snob.'  Unlike  George  IV. 
he  was  a  gentleman,  and  a  gentleman  is  a 
man  who  obeys  strange  statutes,  not  to 
be  found  in  any  moral  text-book,  and 
practises  strange  virtues  nameless  from 
the  beginning  of  the  world. 

So  much  may  be  said  and  should  be 
said  for  the  Restoration,  that  it  was  the 
revolt  of  something  human,  if  only  the 
debris  of  human  nature.  But  more  cannot 
be  said.  It  was  emphatically  a  fall  and 
not  an  ascent,  a  recoil  and  not  an  advance, 
a  sudden  weakness  and  not  a  sudden 
strength.  That  the  bow  of  human  nature 
was  by  Puritanism  bent  immeasurably  too 
E  65 


CHARLES    II 

far,  that  it  overstrained  the  soul  by 
stretching  it  to  the  height  of  an  ahnost 
horrible  idealism,  makes  the  collapse  of 
the  Restoration  infinitely  more  excusable, 
but  it  does  not  make  it  any  the  less  a 
collapse.  Nothing  can  efface  the  essential 
distinction  that  Puritanism  was  one  of 
the  world^s  great  efforts  after  the  discovery 
of  the  true  order,  whereas  it  was  the 
essence  of  the  Restoration  that  it  involved 
no  effort  at  all.  It  is  true  that  the 
Restoration  was  not,  as  has  been  widely 
assumed,  the  most  immoral  epoch  of  our 
history.  Its  vices  cannot  compare  for  a 
moment  in  this  respect  with  the  monstrous 
tragedies  and  almost  suffocating  secrecies 
and  villainies  of  the  Court  of  James  I. 
But  the  dram-drinking  and  nose-slitting 
of  the  saturnalia  of  Charles  II.  seem  at 
once  more  human  and  more  detestable 
than   the    passions   and    poisons   of   the 

66 


CHARLES    II 

Renaissance,  much  in  the  same  way  that 
a  monkey  appears  inevitably  more  human 
and  more  detestable  than  a  tiger.  Com- 
pared with  the  Renaissance,  there  is 
something  Cockney  about  the  Restoration. 
Not  only  was  it  too  indolent  for  great 
morality,  it  was  too  indolent  even  for 
great  art.  It  lacked  that  seriousness 
which  is  needed  even  for  the  pursuit  of 
pleasure,  that  discipline  which  is  essential 
even  to  a  game  of  lawn  tennis.  It  would 
have  appeared  to  Charles  II.''s  poets  quite 
as  arduous  to  write  '  Paradise  Lost  ^  as  to 
regain  Paradise. 

All  old  and  vigorous  languages  abound 
in  images  and  metaphors,  which,  though 
lightly  and  casually  used,  are  in  truth 
poems  in  themselves,  and  poems  of  a  high 
and  striking  order.  Perhaps  no  phrase 
is  so  terribly  significant  as  the  phrase 
'  killing  time.'     It  is  a  tremendous  and 

67 


CHARLES   II 

poetical  image,  the  image  of  a  kind  of 
cosmic  parricide.  There  is  on  the  earth 
a  race  of  revellers  who  do,  under  all  their 
exuberance,  fundamentally  regard  time 
as  an  enemy.  Of  these  were  Charles  II. 
and  the  men  of  the  Restoration.  What- 
ever may  have  been  their  merits,  and 
as  we  have  said  we  think  that  they  had 
merits,  they  can  never  have  a  place 
among  the  great  representatives  of  the 
joy  of  life,  for  they  belonged  to  those 
lower  epicureans  who  kill  time,  as  opposed 
to  those  higher  epicureans  who  make  time 
live. 

Of  a  people  in  this  temper  Charles  II. 
was  the  natural  and  rightful  head.  He 
may  have  been  a  pantomime  King,  but  he 
was  a  King,  and  with  all  his  geniality  he 
let  nobody  forget  it.  He  was  not,  indeed, 
the  aimless  flaneur  that  he  has  been  repre- 
sented.    He  was  a  patient  and  cunning 

68 


CHARLES    II 

politician,  who  disguised  his  wisdom  under 
so  perfect  a  mask  of  folly  that  he  not  only 
deceived  his  allies  and  opponents,  hut  has 
deceived  almost  all  the  historians  that 
have  come  after  him.  But  if  Charles  was, 
as  he  emphatically  was,  the  only  Stuart 
who  really  achieved  despotism,  it  was 
greatly  due  to  the  temper  of  the  nation 
and  the  age.  Despotism  is  the  easiest  of 
all  governments,  at  any  rate  for  the 
governed. 

It  is  indeed  a  form  of  slavery,  and  it  is 
the  despot  who  is  the  slave.  Men  in  a 
state  of  decadence  employ  professionals 
to  fight  for  them,  professionals  to  dance 
for  them,  and  a  professional  to  rule 
them. 

Almost  all  the  faces  in  the  portraits  of 
that  time  look,  as  it  were,  like  masks  put 
on  artificially  with  the  perruque.  A 
strange  unreality  broods  over  the  period. 

69 


CHARLES    II 

Distracted  as  we  are  with  civic  mysteries 
and  problems,  we  can  afford  to  rejoice. 
Our  tears  are  less  desolate  than  their 
laughter,  our  restraints  are  larger  than 
their  liberty. 


liii 


■-i-''i''!iii''iiiiiiiiii!;i;iiiMl 


4' 


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date  stamped  below. 


f>*!»- 


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MAY  2  1  1962 

tSTERLIBRAR 


POUR  WEEK?  FROA'  qATE  OF  RECtrW 
NON-RENEWA8tE 


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AUG'2  'itres 

AUG  2  j  1968 
DISCHARGE-URL 

SEP    ^1980 


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3  1158 


0394  2173 


UC  SOUTHERN  RCGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


AA    000  792  216    4 


J 


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